Treat Him Like A Criminal
by AuroraBanshee
Summary: For twenty years, Peter hasn't understood what made Neal go back to a life of crime. Now, with his old CI in custody again, he'll finally get his answers. Breaks off from canon somewhere in season five.


_Disclaimer: I do not now nor have I ever owned White Collar, and neither do I claim so. I use the show's character's with the utmost respect for its owners and am not planning any money-making schemes._

_This chapter directly pulls dialogue from Season Three's "Judgment Day" and Season Five's "Controlling Interest."_

_..._

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…

"_I've been serving too many masters. I'm through being everyone's puppet."_

"_Hagen? The FBI? What strings exactly do you plan on cutting?"_

"_When the time comes... all of them."_

_..._

Peter Burke was retiring from his job.

He'd done it for a long time, but he was getting old and it wasn't what it used to be. His rise through the ranks, while impressive, left him with little more to do than paperwork. He occasionally got directly involved with cases, but it wasn't the same as it used to be. Peter had only stayed around as long as he had to see the close of this one last case.

He looked through the glass at his old CI, wondering where it all went wrong. Neal seemed relaxed, just like he always did. Despite his cuffed hands, he still gave off an air of being completely in control of the situation, all laid-back smiles and sparkling eyes. He was even whistling as he waited, an old classic with an upbeat tune that bespoke of a happy life.

Even after so much time, Neal had maintained his good looks and charm. It was a matured, slightly wrinkled and graying look, but one that was no less effective. Peter was sure he could still seduce a number of girls while at the same time stealing their most valuable possessions from under their noses.

He'd had enough. Peter walked into the room, ready to be all business and authoritative tone. Then he remembered who he was talking to and decided to try a different tactic.

"Why did you do it?" he began in a faux causal voice.

"Do what?"

"Any of it. The coins, the manuscript, running away. You had a good life."

"Did I?"

Peter took a moment to really think about his answer. He remembered all that time ago, what had been going on. He might not remember everything anymore, but Peter was positive that Neal had had a good life. It's knowledge that he'd gone over and over in his mind for the last twenty years. "Yes."

_..._

_Neal Caffrey was done with people._

_Well, he wasn't done with the people he could use, and he wasn't done with Mozzie. Mozzie and he had a strange dynamic, but both knew that neither of them would double cross the other. He was the only person that Neal trusted to have his back no matter what. Even Peter, whom Neal respected a great deal, couldn't be trusted most of the time anymore. Because, when it came down to it, Neal's past put them on different sides of the law, and no amount of good deeds could erase that past._

_He didn't want his past erased anyway. His past defined everything that he held dear.: his love of art, his knowledge of the finer things in life, his sense of right and wrong, no matter how twisted some said it was._

_Once upon a time, Neal's dream had been to become a police officer like his father and to make his family proud. He would have been brilliant at it; he knew he would have. He would have learned the ins and outs of crimes from the other side of the law. Maybe he would have worked undercover – seemed to be up his alley – but Neal would have always been the good guy in the end. It didn't matter, though, because that's not how his life had turned out._

_Meeting Mozzie soon after running away had been an opportunity handed to him on a silver platter. It's possible that he would have eventually gotten to the same level of crime, but it would have taken a lot longer. Either way, Neal had lived a life of crime – a very high-end life of crime – and he couldn't take that back. This criminal past made him the man he was today, an expert forger and connoisseur of all fine things – a far cry from what he would have ended up as if he'd gone into law enforcement._

_Then again, maybe Neal had been destined to become a criminal. He wasn't sure anymore._

...

"Maybe I just wanted to. It's what I do, right?" For whatever reason, Neal was playing games with him and Peter didn't like it.

"No, it wasn't. You had changed. You'd just saved me from a life in prison by hunting down your dad."

"Well, I couldn't very well have had my handler go to jail. Imagine what could have happened to me." His tone was sarcastic and his smile sardonic. There was apparently more to that story than Peter knew, but that wasn't what he was concerned about right now.

"You probably would have been placed with someone else," he responded calmly. "You were too good to be sent back to prison."

"I was also too unpredictable to_ not_ be sent back to prison."

"You were a part of our family."

"Was I?" He asked, voice raising. "Because it didn't feel like it."

"Yes."

"Well, you guys had a funny way of showing it." Neal was starting to get angry, leaning forward in the chair, which was good. It meant answers.

_..._

_Neal didn't have to be a criminal, but he could be and he was good at it. __In fact, he loved it. __He loved the thrill of simply taking something _because it was there. _There didn't have to be a reason for it all the time. __The therapist had said he was a sociopath. Would he have found his way to a life of crime even if he had started out as a police officer? It didn't really matter anymore._

_But his gig with the FBI was fun. Solving cases and planning stings very nearly satisfied that old itch to take. He could have lived with it, but Neal couldn't live with being everyone's puppet._

_He was tired of having his past actions being shoved in his face. He was tired of people manipulating him. He was tired of not being able to make decisions in his own life. It would have been one thing if it was Peter making the calls – Neal could trust him with that – but it was never just him. Someone from the FBI always wanted him as a tool in their belt or someone on the other side of the law found a way to use his expertise. Both sides were willing to fight dirty to get what they wanted. Maybe Neal could have lived with that, too, if only Peter would treat him like his partner and not his enemy._

_He couldn't __live with Peter's looks of disappointment. He couldn't live with the underlying expectation of him to do the wrong thing._

...

"We trusted you."

"You kept me on a leash!"

"You were a criminal serving a sentence."

"I was a dog!" Neal took a moment to control himself, settling back in his chair and taking a deep breath. When he spoke again, the anger was still there, but it was restrained. "I had to go where I was called. If I had any place in your family, it was as the family pet. I wasn't my own man."

"That's not true. Everything was fine until you started stealing again, right when I trusted you the most, right when I was the most grateful to have you on our side."

Neal sank back into the chair, suddenly looking as though he'd accepted some greater truth.

"Then I guess I really am just the bad guy." No. Peter had made a mistake. This isn't what he wanted. This wasn't what he'd waited so many years for.

"You don't get off that easy. Something set you off. I thought for a while it might have been that therapist when she drugged you, but then we found out that you started before that. Why?"

"I always wanted freedom."

"You would have gotten it eventually."

"I'm not so sure about that."

"All you had to do was follow the rules."

A beat of silence. Neal looked like he wanted to say something but changed his mind.

"Well, you made it pretty hard to do that." Something shifted then. Neal readjusted himself in his chair, sitting taller than he had been before. His facial features settled into an expression of resolve. He was finally giving up. "How do you think I found my dad, Peter?"

That wasn't what he'd been expecting.

"You had plenty of contacts all over the place. I'm sure it wasn't that hard." Peter felt uncomfortable with the look Neal was giving him, daring him to figure it out. "What? You're telling me you had to make a deal with some people to find him? That's why you stole?"

"I never found him."

"Your dad wouldn't have done it on his own. Did _he_ make a deal with you? You steal some coins and he sends in a recorded confession?"

"My dad never gave a confession."

A moment of realization. "You forged it?"

"Yes."

"So forging something triggered your life of crime again?"

"There was no guarantee that a recording like that would hold up in a trial, especially given my abilities. It wouldn't have been enough."

"You made a deal, just not with your dad." He wasn't sure he wanted to know, but... "Who?"

"Hagen. He said that if I stole the coins he'd make sure you were declared innocent."

"But it didn't stop at the coins," Peter guessed.

"It was never about the coins. The coins were a way of getting me on tape. After that he could make me do whatever he wanted. It started with the evidence of his crimes and then it became about the manuscript."

"What was special about it?"

"I never found out. Once I got Hagen caught, Moz and I ran before we ever broke the code."

"You could have told me all of this back then."

"I clearly broke the law, Peter. You wouldn't have had any choice but to send me back to prison. Besides, you were already treating me like a criminal by then. You even said it to my face." Peter couldn't remember what Neal was talking about, but he wondered how deeply it had cut if it could still cause so much pain in his eyes.

_..._

_Neal couldn't win. He'd been trying for nearly five years and he still hadn't found a way to live peacefully. Just under two years ago he'd been so close. He'd come to the realization that New York was his home and, with or without the anklet, he had planned on helping Peter for as long as he could. Then Kramer interfered. As soon as Neal saw Peter surrounded by Kramer and other FBI agents and Peter shook his head, there was a voice whispering in his mind, "You'll never be free."_

_Neal should have known better than to have faith in anyone other than himself. _

_He should have realized that he wasn't destined to be the good guy, that he could only be the criminal. Two years ago, Peter had been willing to set him free. Fast-forward and now they were nearly back at square one, not trusting each other and Neal looking for a way to get out._

_The irony of it all was that his current predicament came from helping Peter, from listening to Elizabeth when she told him to do anything and everything he could. Peter would never know. He'd only ever think that Neal was doing it because he wanted to, because he could. Well, if they wanted him to be a criminal, he'd be a criminal. If he was going to be treated like the bad guy, if he was going to get his hands dirty anyway, why not actually be the bad guy? Why not do it on his own terms?_

...

"I wanted to be reformed, Peter. I tried, but no one would let me. I always had to do something bad for someone and trying to play nice with the FBI at the same time only got more people hurt. That's what happened to Siegal. He was killed only a few hours after I had a meeting with Hagen at that exact spot."

"You could have-"

"I was trapped, Peter!" The exclamation echoed off the walls. Once it settled, Neal began again, quieter, "I had to run before it got worse. There was no other option."

They sat in silence after that, measuring each other.

_..._

_He'd been the bad guy and it failed because of Kate. He'd been the good guy and it failed because of his past. Worse yet, it got innocent people like Siegal hurt. If Neal was the bad guy and only answered to himself, he might be happy again. It was his last chance._

_Maybe Peter would catch him again and he'd see that look of disappointment once more before rotting in a jail cell. It was a risk he was willing to take. He had to run._

...

"So why did you do it?"

"Do what?"

"Why'd you turn yourself in? No one was even close to catching you." It was the only thing Peter still didn't understand.

Neal sighed. "I'm a dead man walking. Cancer. I don't have much time left."

"So you're giving up?"

"I have nothing left. Moz died years back." There was a real sadness and pain in his eyes again. Peter remembered how much of a pain in the ass Mozzie was, but he also remembered how close he was to Neal, how much they did for each other.

"There was never anyone else? No girl worth your extended time?"

"No girl. Just you."

"Me? I thought I treated you like a criminal?"

"I thought I was one?" He paused. "You were a good handler, Peter. I just couldn't be handled. I wanted you to know that."

Had he been a good handler? Peter had always thought he'd done right by Neal and, if anything, trusted him too much at times. Looking back, even when he had recognized that Neal had a good heart, he'd always suspected something was up. Granted, something usually was, but he never considered that Neal could have been manipulated by other people, at least not at the end. Despite their years of work together, he hadn't given Neal the benefit of the doubt. He'd instead reminded himself again and again that Neal was a conman, a criminal.

...

"_As long as we treat him like a criminal, he'll always think he is one."_

…

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_Author's Notes:_

_Woooo. So I have a lot of feelings about season five. Pretty much every episode has me going "Nooo. Poor Neal. He just wants to do the right thing but no one will let him and when will he ever get a break?" I figured I could actually translate those feelings into something semi-productive, so here we are._

_In case it was hard to understand, the story alternates between two points in time: Neal and Peter twenty-ish years after season five (non-italics) and Neal's thoughts somewhere during season five (italics). I'd say it breaks off from canon around episode four or six, assuming that Neal doesn't _actually_ get Hagen arrested by the FBI somehow in the show and then runs off with Mozzie into the sunset. But the season's not over, so maybe! (Ha, no. That had better not happen.)_

_In the future (non-italic) part, Neal has turned himself in after years of crime and Peter is on the verge of retiring._

_Leave a review if you like or don't if you so choose. As always, thanks for reading!_


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